An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations

Where ye affirm that the Prophet could not touch their hearts, but by declaring them to be hard hearted, ye seem not to understand what is the virtue and power of gods word pronounced even by the mouth of man, which (as before we have declared) pierceth to the deepest secret that lieth within the heart. Yea and worketh that thing, which the Pro ⟨p. 374⟩phete pronounceth, and speaketh, how unapparent that ever it be to mans reason, or how stoutly and stubbornly that ever the wicked resist. Did not the words of Elijah spoken unto Ahab after the murdering of Naboth, touch his heart? yes, the very hypocrite him self had some sense and feeling of gods just wrath. And both he and his posterity, for all his princely pomp, did after feel the verity of them. To wit dogs did lick his blood, the flesh of Jezebel was eaten by dogs, his children, and hole posterity were rooted out of Israel. And thus did the words of the Prophet touch his heart (in the time when they were spoken) with a certain fear, stupidity, and trembling. which words were after of such power, strength, and verity, that no male children were left alive to Ahab in Israel. And the same is true of Jeremies wordest & sentence spoken against divers nations, whose faces albeit he never saw, yet did he so potently touch their hearts, that how soever they despised his threatenings, yet was no word vainly spoken, but in effect was every thing complete, as he pronounced. And wonder it is that ye are ignorant in this virtue of gods word, seeing that ye confess that Jeremiah toke the cup from the Lords hand,¹ which he was commanded to give to all nations, that they might drink the cup of the Lords wrath, saying unto them: Drink, & be drunken, and spew, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you. Was this I pray you a simple declaration• or was it not rather a sentence & decree so effectual, that albeit nether Babylon, nether any other proud and wicked nation would for that time believe it, yet came it most effectually to pass? And I say that these words of Jeremiah do manifestly repugn to your interpretation, & do sufficiently prove that those words spoken to Isai, are otherwise to be understand, then that he was commanded only to declare what the people were.

Where ye affirme that ye Prophet could not touch their heartes, but by declaring thē to be hard hearted, ye seme not to vnderstand what is the vertue and power of gods word pronounced euē by the mouth of man, wc (as before we haue declared) pearceth to ye depest secret that lieth within the heart. Yea and worketh that thing, wc the Pro